Groublogpon – The Serious Blog of Groupon

Daniel, the Groupon employee participating in the “Walk of Shameless” challenge for charity, walked with Team Carl for five days. You rallied, you tweeted, you tuned in to your televisions. Thanks to everyone’s efforts, Team Carl won the competition! They will split the grand prize of $50,000 and earned $13,600 for their charity, The ALS Development Institute. We asked Daniel about his time on the treadmill:

Tell us about your experience!

The experience itself was almost surreal. I never thought in a million years we would get picked to compete, much less win it. We put everything we had into this competition for five days straight and raised an unprecedented amount of buzz and support for ALS. It is quite amazing to see the effect you have when you really reach out to people and humbling to see how many were willing to show their support and spread the word.

What was the toughest part?

The hardest part was keeping all our followers/supporters engaged and voting throughout the entire competition. It was easy to spark interest the first few days through social media, but you can only send out so many emails and so many tweets about the same thing before people start to disconnect. We were constantly trying to come up with creative ways to get our message out and engage supporters. (Also, walking while simultaneously typing on an iPad and talking on the phone is quite a challenge!)

read more »

Tomorrow is Winter Bike to Work Day in Chicago. Our city’s weather has been relatively kind to us this year, postponing the inevitable snow dump until…Well, we don’t want to jinx it and get too cocky. Last year’s blizzard kept us shoveling for months.

From the Active Transportation Alliance website:

Winter Bike to Work Day takes place on Jan. 20, the 27th anniversary of Chicago’s coldest day, when the official temperature at O’Hare International Airport was 27 degrees below zero.

There are several brave souls at Groupon who continue to commute regardless of the elements. They don their helmets, gloves, second pair of gloves, tights, other tights, booties, balaclavas, two sets of socks, layered shirts, and waterproof windbreakers to head out on the open roads throughout the winter months.

To make this post personal for a moment, I looked like this the other week and thawed at my desk after the windchill clocked in at 6 degrees. Yes, my toes were cold. Yes, I looked like a spelunking enthusiast. But it’s a faster commute, exercise, and until the snow remembers it’s supposed to make a heavy appearance, I’ll be cycling. Some will even be cycling through that snow, but they have super powers and can shoot lasers out of their eyes.

Other bike commuters in the office offered these winter-cycling tips:

Patty: If you don’t have booties, or even if you do, plastic bags over your socks is a good way to keep your feet dry.

Marne: Just a warning–With the plows pulling stuff from the depths of the gutter into the bike lanes, flats might be more likely.

Kelsey: Lights and reflective gear. It gets dark earlier and cars are not as used to watching for cyclists in the winter.

Are you planning on riding through the winter? What’s your winter routine?

Groupon Announces New Promotional Marketing Instrument – Clicky, The Clickable Value-Wheel

We’re excited to be a part of the launch of Clicky, the Clickable Value-Wheel which gives users the opportunity to potentially score a discount on select Groupons by the simple act of spinning a wheel! Clicky was designed to provide momentary distraction and meet the minimum threshold of amusement necessary for users to share Clicky, the Clickable Value-Wheel through social media channels, thereby virally spreading Groupon and increasing its number of active customers.

Before I go further, check out this behind-the-scenes video about Clicky’s origin:

We want to let users know that the chances of winning are slim, but not impossible. As with many online computer games, the win ratio was determined to ensure that the lifetime value of the new customers attracted to Groupon by Clicky, the Clickable Value-Wheel will be greater than the total cost of the program, thus making the program a practical and sustainable investment for Groupon. And since spinning is moderately enjoyable, every user of Clicky, the Clickable Value-Wheel is a winner – metaphorically. Literally, most people will not win anything.

Clicky, the Clickable Value-Wheel, is one of several potential marketing instruments Groupon has and will continue to test over time, some of which will be successful while others will not.  Continuously experimenting with new marketing mechanisms is an important part of the growth of any company.

For full terms of the game, visit http://www.groupon.com/pages/clicky-terms.

Let us know what you think!

Naveen Koorakula and Sakina Arsiwala

Directors, Groupon Social

Hi everyone – happy New Year! We’re starting off 2012 with exciting news: the launch of our new Merchant Center, a revamped dashboard that gives merchants a comprehensive view of performance across their entire Groupon experience.

The new Merchant Center condenses and simplifies many features from the previous version, providing merchants with a snapshot of their featured deals, Groupon Now! deals, and Groupon Rewards program. It also provides demographics information of deal buyers, including age, sex, and zip codes – invaluable information for merchants to analyze their active customer base.

A significant addition to the new Merchant Center is customer feedback. Groupon recently began surveying all customers about their Groupon experiences immediately after redemption. Merchants can now see the overall percentage of Groupon customers that would recommend their business and scroll through customer comments added in real time, further helping merchants understand how they’re performing and how to think about repeat business potential. To date, over one million consumers have provided feedback to Groupon merchants.

All current Groupon merchants have access to the new Merchant Center through merchants.groupon.com, and they’ll still have access to the previous dashboard for a while to help them comfortably transition to the look and feel of the new one.

Here’s to another great year of new and improved merchant products – we can’t wait to show you what’s next!

Amit Koren

Senior Product Manager